1861 -1909 · American West, illustration, painting and sculpture

Cowboys, horsemen, soldiers, indigenous and nocturnal peoples made Frederic Remington one of the great visual makers of the American West.

Frederic Remington was born in Canton, New York, in 1861. After a stint at Yale, he traveled several times in the American West and collected sketches, photographs, clothing, weapons and stories. He did not live permanently on the border, but transformed these observations into images intended for the vast audience of East Coast magazines. Beginning in the mid-1880s, his illustrations appeared in Harper's Weekly, Century, Collier's and numerous publications. Horsemen, soldiers, cowboys and indigenous peoples appeared there in action with an exceptional sense of movement, equipment and terrain. Remington simultaneously developed a more painted work ambitious. In Dash for the Timber and Fight for the Waterhole organize pursuit and danger through diagonals, horses and dust. In Lullaby of the Cowboy, the story slows down and gives way to waking, singing and nocturnal space. His last years favored color, twilight and nocturnal, such as Moonlight, Wolf, where the West became an experience of silence and uncertainty. In 1895, Remington approached sculpture with The Broncho Buster. He created twenty-two bronze subjects, working with sand and then lost wax casting processes to better translate the balance of the horses and the energy of the gesture. He also writes stories and novels. Died in 1909 at the age of forty-eight, Remington left more than 3,000 paintings, drawings and works on signed paper, to which was added a sculpture that had become emblematic. The "Frederic Remington" selection notably compares A Dash for the Timber and Combat pour le point d’eau. His reading favors movement.

Remington constructs action through horses, space and light: the West becomes a theater where speed, expectation and myth remain inseparable.